Daily Archives: October 26, 2019

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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. -- A new therapeutic program based on virtual reality technology has been rolled out at Emmanuel Hospice.

Patients of the West Michigan-based hospice program are already using the VR headsets to visit far away locations like Paris, Amsterdam and the International Space Station.

Its patients that arent able to go anywhere anymore, they arent mobile anymore, says Bryan Cramer, Director of Business Development at Emmanuel Hospice. They are using a compact VR headset produced by Oculus. The surprisingly un-intrusive device can be adapted to be used by patients that are fully mobile and by patients who are no longer able to move around.

It's put it on, push a button and go, Cramer says. Emmanuel Hospice works with each patient to pre-load content onto the headsets. It all depends on what sort of situations they would like to experience.

If you already have a family member at Emmanuel and are interested in them trying the new VR Therapy, you are asked to contact any of their on-site staff.

For more information about the VR Therapy program, CLICK HERE.

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Virtual Reality Therapy sends hospice patients to space - WXMI FOX 17 West Michigan

In a move the Wright brothers likely never anticipated but surely would approve, the Air Force Research Laboratory Aerospace Systems Directorate is using a bicycle to demonstrate how virtual and augmented reality could revolutionize aircraft maintenance, as well as collaborative partnerships.

At the Air Vehicles Technology Symposium, held Sept. 10-12 in Dayton, the Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality for Aircraft Maintenance, or VAMRAM, team demonstrated a unique potential use for a technology most commonly associated with video gaming. Using a Wright Cycle Company bicycle, commercially available smartglasses and a software application developed in conjunction with small business partner Energective, the team showed off a mixed reality display tool that can provide crews step-by-step instructions and visual cues that guide them through aircraft maintenance procedures.

This tire change project is part of the teams larger effort to streamline the acquisition and development process through an open data- and idea-sharing community, driven largely by technology end users.

Special events will celebrate heritage, history, art, traditions

Using the bicycle as a basic vehicle surrogate, the AFRL team gave symposium attendees the opportunity to use the tool to engage in the process of changing a component, from start to finish. Through the headset, users were able to see real-time visual aids laid over the actual bicycle wheel, guiding them to the correct part, providing direction and enabling them to complete the task.

This tool holds the potential to streamline the sometimes cumbersome aircraft maintenance process, which often requires crews to refer back and forth to a set of paper instructions while simultaneously interpreting and executing the actions onboard the aircraft.

Typical content delivery of the technical data is more prescriptive, said VAMRAM team co-lead Capt. David Eisensmith. It says, Do this, and you interpret it from the pictures and do it in the physical space. With this system, AR gives you visual cues to show you what to do; so its more instructive than prescriptive.

Although the team emphasizes that this technology is in the early exploratory stages, Eisensmith said it holds the potential to be a game-changing tool for the maintenance community. Beyond the obvious benefits of simplifying maintenance and repair actions, the tool could also be used to direct digital workflows, capture and record maintenance data, and share that data across the user community.

In this way, it can be a big enabling technology for the Air Forces flight line of the future and condition-based/predictive maintenance, helping crews anticipate maintenance needs rather than rely on pre-planned maintenance schedules.

Ashtin Hicks, VAMRAM integrated product team lead, said the system can also be a valuable training tool. Much like a flight simulator is used to train pilots, this system could be used to instruct maintainers on new aircraft or procedures, without the need for physical hardware.

This could be used to get technicians trained and operational faster and with more accuracy from the first day, said Hicks.

The team said the potential uses for this technology are far-reaching. But to move the technology from prototype to product requires collaboration. Their mission is to put together a roadmap for acquiring the expertise, partnerships, data and ideas that can turn concept into reality.

Were trying to teach the Air Force about this technology and how to integrate it and produce content, said Eisensmith. As AFRL, we are trying to achieve not the final product, but the knowledge and data management that goes behind it.

He explained that through a 2018 AFWERX Challenge, the VAMRAM team ran a tech sprint in conjunction with the Wright Brothers Institute. The idea of creating an innovators guide to advance collaboration and expedite development arose out of that event. This guide is intended to walk end-users through the process of identifying a problem that this technology could potentially solve, working through a possible solution, testing that solution and evaluating the efficacy of the solution. The VAMRAM team sees the innovators uide as a tool to enable users to gather and crowdsource data that will benefit the entire technical community.

Putting this guide out there with a process to work through helps turn the Air Force into our laboratory and allows for that crowdsourcing mentality to happen, said Eisensmith.

Additionally, the team is conducting product development case studies, with the end goal of developing and documenting a tailored acquisition process. The bicycle tire change project is one such case study through which the team hopes to test out a tailored development approach, bringing in contracted partners to develop software and work hand-in-hand with the AFRL team. Were working with a company that is willing to learn with us, Hicks said of the application developers.

Moving toward technology sharing and tailored acquisition is important to the Air Force because it eliminates needless redundancy, expedites development and saves time and money.

Think of it like Wikipedia, said Eisensmith. Were letting users produce their own content, publish their own lessons learned, identify their own gaps. We want it to be crowdsourced. We want everyone to be able to contribute to that.

He notes that developing a product for a task even as simple as the bike wheel change involves many variables, including hardware acquisition, data access, hardware and software support, and cybersecurity, to name only a few. Its a daunting task and precisely why rethinking basic acquisition is so important.

Acquisition is challenging, said VAMRAM team co-lead Dr. Pam Kobryn. How do you tell the developer what your requirements are, how do you test, how do you determine what it is going to cost, how do you evaluate proposals? Thats what were bringing in.

Now that the team has completed the technical effort behind the mixed reality bicycle tire change tool, their next step is to conduct an effectiveness study and capture lessons learned, all of which will be incorporated into the Innovators Guide. They will also continue to raise awareness and recruit partners through events such as the Air Vehicles Technology Symposium.

We want to find interested parties that want to collaborate with us, said Eisensmith. It is our hope to bring more people in to be a part of the innovators guide, exercise it, publish case studies and provide feedback. Our technology partners are our best resource.

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AFRL reimagines tech development with virtual reality - Dayton Daily News

A packed bus approaches Checkpoint Charlie, the Cold War's most famous border crossing, as grim-faced East German guards whisper among themselves about whether to hold you for questioning.

After a few heart-stopping minutes, you and your fellow passengers are free to pass into the smog, soot and shadowy intrigue of 1980s East Berlin.

"Our idea was that if we can't take you back in time yet, let's try to create the perfect illusion of it," TimeRide founder Jonas Rothe, 33, told AFP.

"This isn't a museum and we don't want to be. We want to let you lose yourself in the feeling of being a participant in history."

TimeRide Berlin opened in late August ahead of celebrations of the 30th anniversary of the triumphant fall of the Wall on November 9, 1989 in a peaceful people's revolution.

It taps into a growing desire for "authentic", interactive and immersive historical tourism, Rothe said, especially in a cityscape that has undergone a dramatic transformation in those three decades.

The Palast der Republik, Berlin's TV Tower and the Berlin Cathedral from behind the Wall, as scene through virtual reality. Photo: DPA

Where's the Wall?

Many tourists are disappointed to find few traces left of the loathed barrier that divided Berlin for nearly 28 years, which was rapidly torn down in the rush toward reunification in 1990 and its aftermath.

Rothe, who was born in the eastern city of Dresden but just a toddler when the Wall came crashing down, said he wanted to give his customers a vivid sense of a lost world.

TimeRide guests get a quick introduction into how vanquished Germany was divided into sectors after World War II, and how the communist authorities in 1961 sealed the border overnight to stop a mass exodus to the west.

In the next room, three protagonists -- a rebellious tile layer, a disillusioned true believer, and a West Berlin punk who spent a lot of time in the east's underground scene -- introduce themselves via a video screen.

Visitors choose one of the trio to "lead" them on the tour, then board a mockup bus and slip on a pair of VR goggles.

The "ride" takes in the tense border crossing, the elegant Gendarmenmarkt square with its two cathedrals still bearing heavy damage from World War II, and new pre-fab high rises on Leipziger Strasse that were then the height of residential luxury.

Stasi agents keep not-so-subtle tabs on citizens from unmarked cars, while consumers queue up for scarce fresh produce and communist propaganda spouts from megaphones.

Rothe said he aimed to create a fully immersive experience.

"Of course smell has the strongest connection to memory but it's not easy to recreate without giving people a headache," he quipped, thinking in particular of the unmistakable stench of exhaust from East German Trabant cars.

The bus ride reaches its finale at the Palace of the Republic, a pleasure palace as well as home of the rubber-stamp parliament which was demolished in 2008, and features actual footage of the joyous fall of the Berlin Wall.

"Those images never fail to move people -- it was a decisive turning point in the history of Germany, Europe and the whole world."

Founder Jonas Rothe explains TimeRide and shows how it works.

'Old spy movies'

Business has been brisk in the weeks ahead of the anniversary.

Colin MacLean, 47, a Scottish IT professional, said he had come to learn more about East Germany because his wife grew up under communism, and he's a fan of Cold War thrillers.

"I like that kind of melancholic feeling that you get from old spy movies and stuff -- big squares with just two people walking over them, that kind of thing," he said.

Robert Meyer, a 55-year-old west German, often used to visit family living on the other side of the Wall.

"The way they showed the border crossing was so real," said Meyer, who works in aviation safety.

"You'd have these guards and you were powerless before them -- they could just treat you like they wanted."

His wife Iris Rodriguez, 47, a restaurant owner originally from the Dominican Republic, said the "happy ending" had touched her.

"It was like everyone was in prison and in the end they came free," she said. "Thank God all that's over."

'Really be careful'

For all the frisson of border crossings and Stasi surveillance when seen with historical distance, the real-life suffering of dissidents under communist rule should not be taken lightly, Rothe said.

"What we don't show are the escapes, and in particular the deaths at the Wall."

An estimated 327 people perished trying to cross the border between East. and West Germany to freedom, according to a government-commissioned study whose findings, however, remain disputed.

Rothe said that given the massive potential interest he could imagine offering a Nazi-era tour, but that the historical taboos would make it riskier.

"You'd have to really be careful about what you'd show and how respectfully you'd do it," he said.

"You'd have to shine a light on all sides so that there would be no issue of glorifying anything, or showing anything that was unbearable."

Anna Kaminsky, head of the publicly funded Foundation for the Study of Communist Dictatorship in East Germany, said that although young Germans were not always very well-informed about the Cold War, they tell pollsters they are very interested.

"It's essential to use new technology to teach the next generation about that period, and to give them a sense of what it felt like to live behind the Wall," she told AFP.

By Deborah Cole

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30 years on, Berlin Wall comes back to life with virtual reality - The Local Germany

A husband and wife team from West Bloomfield are opening up a new virtual reality arcade in Pontiac.

The V.R Life Arcade, located at 320 Telegraph Road, will be the countys second dedicated virtual reality entertainment space along with theEscape Virtual Reality Arcade in Oxford. Featuring both room-scale and omnidirectional treadmill gaming hardware, the new arcade will launch with over 50 games during its grand opening event on Saturday, Oct. 26.

Inside a room-scale virtual reality station at the new V.R Life Arcade.

Sheray and Jack Laury, also co-owners of Southfield-based The Party Source, said they were inspired to start the business by their kids. With a 17-year-old and two young children, the couple said they found that virtual reality gaming was a good way to spend time together as a family.

Were hoping to provide a place where the whole family can come together. Our kids are all over the place in age, but they all love it here, Sheray Laury said. In our research, we found that like myself, a lot of moms use this game setting to interact with their kids. Were used to moms saying to get off the couch, get off the games But in this setting, youre moving, laughing, playing all in one place, together.

Sheray and Jack Laury, husband and wife, co-owners of V.R Life Arcade in Pontiac.

The arcade features seven room-scale stations with headsets, hand-held controllers and monitors above each station. Stations can be rented individually with up to 10-guests on each. In the center of the arcade stands four omnidirectional virtual reality treadmills, which allow players to have full 360-degree movement using slip on shoes with sensors.

Omnidirectional virtual reality treadmills at the new V.R Life Arcade opening in Pontiac on Saturday, Oct. 26.

We have a wide variety of games from sports to nature, music games and horror, Sheray Laury said. For Halloween, well be pushing our selection of horror and escape room games. We plan to always be rotating our games. Our management system lets us know whats popular and what people arent playing at all. We also want to take our costumers input on what theyd like to play.

Traditional arcade and racing games, as well as a dedicated kids corner for younger children, are also available.

V.R Life Arcade in Pontiac.

Renovations and build-out of the space, which was previously a furniture store, cost about $175,000 according to the owners. The arcade received a $50,000 Flagstar Big Idea Grant this week to assist with the launch. In 2016, the bank announced it would make a five-year, $10 million investment into the city of Pontiac. About $2.5 million was set aside for economic development and business attraction, including the grant program.

The couple also received a $50,000 small business loan from CEED Lending.

Inside a room-scale virtual reality station at the new V.R Life Arcade.

Were still not done yet, Jack Laury said. Weve got a few more things we want to add. We want to get into tournaments, so were planning on getting a hold of some consoles for that and setting up a place where gamers can bring in their own stuff to play on.

V.R Life Arcade will hold its grand opening event from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 26. Attendees will receive five-minutes of free gameplay on a virtual reality game of their choice, as well as the chance to enter raffles and giveaways including a free birthday party package and gaming packages. The Pontiac All Star Marching Band will also be in attendance to perform prior to the ribbon cutting ceremony. Trunk or Treating will take place in the parking lot from 3 to 5 p.m., or while candy supplies last.

Inside a room-scale virtual reality station at the new V.R Life Arcade.

Prices and booking information can be found at vrlifearcade.com.

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Virtual reality arcade opening in Pontiac this weekend - The Oakland Press

Hong Kong-based virtual reality startup Sandbox VR has closed an $11 million funding round, bringing the company's reported total to $83 million in 2019 following a Series A round earlier this year.

Led by Craft Ventures' David Sacks and Andreessen Horowitz Cultural Leadership Fund, the funding round includesKaty Perry, Justin Timberlake, Will Smith and Orlando Bloom among a celebrity-packed groupof new investors.

Also on the list are Hollywood super-agent and CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz; Japanese soccer star Honda Keisuke; Kevin Durant and his manager, Rich Kleiman; and The Dreamers Fund, which was launched by Keisuke and Smith.

"We're incredibly honored to be able to work with some of the most talented and influential artists, athletes, and actors in the world," said Sandbox CEO and founder Steve Zhao. "Their support is a vote of confidence that our platform will one day become the new medium for the future of sports, music, and storytelling."

Sandbox, which uses motion capture technology tocreateimmersive virtual reality experiences,raised $68 million in a Series A round earlier this year from investors includingAndreesen Horowitz, Floodgate Ventures, Stanford University, Triplepoint Capital, CRCM and Alibaba.

As the new funds roll in, the company is expanding across the U.S., with a new location in Los Angeles and offices coming soon to New York, Austin, San Diego and Chicago for a total of 16 locations planned by the end of 2020.

"We believe that VR is finally ready to take off as a mass-market phenomenon in malls, where it can be optimized for a social experience," Sacks added. "We chose the Sandbox team because of their background in game design; their VR experiences have a level of interactivity -- with both the VR world and other players -- that we couldn't find elsewhere. We believe that Sandbox VR is poised to become the first VR experience for millions of consumers around the world."

Sandbox doesn't currently offer any music-focused experiences, but the virtual reality concert industry is growing. Billie Eilish and Post Malone have streamedshows with VRconcert series Oculus Venues,London-based startupMelodyVR held its first live broadcast with Liam Payne late last year,and Live Nationhas teamed with NextVR to broadcast dozens of concerts in virtual reality.

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Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake & More Invest Millions in Virtual Reality Startup Sandbox VR - Billboard

Sometimes visitors to the Louvre can have a hard time glimpsing the Mona Lisa. Its just 30 inches tall, tucked behind a layer of bulletproof glass and, more often than not, a throng of tourists jostling to capture selfies. While the museum has recently introduced a single-file line system to try and get around the over-crowding, around 80 percent of the museums 10 million yearly visitors still wend their way to the Salle des tats to catch a glimpse of the work.

The problem is so great that the painting could not be included in the museums blockbuster Leonardo da Vinci retrospective, which opens on October 24, for fear that it would make the exhibition practically unvisitable, according to its curators.

But the museum has found a creative solution for the landmark exhibition. Working with the VR headset producer HTCs Vive Arts program, the Louvre has launched its first-ever virtual reality initiative, offering visitors a seven-minute experience of a work titled Mona Lisa: Beyond the Glass.

Still from Mona Lisa Beyond the Glass.Courtesy of Emissive and HTC Vive Arts.

Visitors can strap themselves into the state-of-the-art headsets and learn snippets of information about Leonardos famous sitter, Lisa del Giocondo, as well as his artistic method and the history of the painting. It will immerse them in what could be the surroundings beyond the frame of what is depicted in Leonardos masterpiece, and, at the end, invite them to climb aboard an imagined version of Leonardos visionary flying machinea sketch of which is also included in the exhibitionand soar across the landscape surrounding Mona Lisas luxuriant loggia.

The VR endeavor may sound like its all just a bit of fun, but it is actually part of a serious effort on the part of the Louvre to find new ways to reach a broader public. HTCs Vive Arts was also responsible for bringing Modiglianis final studio to life for Tate Moderns blockbuster show on the artist in 2017.

Victoria Chang, director of HTC VIVE Arts. 2019 HTC VIVE Arts.

We think we can be useful to our museum partners because museums do have their existing audiences, but they are always in search of new ways to expand this audience, or to connect with this audience in different ways, Victoria Chang, the director of VIVE Arts, tells artnet News.

For many museums, digital experiences are introduced in an effort to grow visitor numbers, but as the most-visited museum in the world, the Louvre hardly needs to court new attendees. The museum still wants to amplify whatever it does beyond those who can actually set foot in the museum, Chang explains. In this case we helped them by making this digital content, and making it available online across all virtual reality platforms.

We are not about figures, Dominique de Font-Raulx, the director of the Louvres interpretation and cultural programming department,says. Figures are good, but what sense would it make to have 15 million people without accommodating them well? Its nonsense.

De Font-Raulx says that the time was right for the Louvre to make its first foray into VR both because of the significance of the exhibitionmarking the 500th anniversary of Leonardos death, it is one of the most high-profile museum events anywhere in the worldand because the exhibitions curators were both open to the idea.

Still from Mona Lisa Beyond the Glass.Courtesy of Emissive and HTC Vive Arts.

The initial plan was to create an experience around Leonardos The Last Supper, because it would be impossible to bring the mural, which was painted onto the wall of Milans Santa Maria delle Grazie convent, to the exhibition. But the museum ended up going with the Mona Lisa because it was too difficult to get the volume of information about the work necessary to create a valuable VR experience from something that wasnt in the Louvres collection. In the end, The Last Supper is present in the exhibition through an interesting copy by Leonardo disciple Marco DOggiono.

We have many different publics and we have to accommodate all of them and the different types of questions they have, so offering different types of education is a crucial thing for us, de Font-Raulx says. The virtual reality was a new way to expand the museums existing devices, from the traditional wall labels to more recent audio and video guides.

The initiative is part of a broader plan to make culture accessible to a wider public. Efforts have been underway in France to redistribute some of its cultural resources around the country. The French culture minister Franck Riester plans to introduce a number of small-scale digital museums around France that will showcase high-resolution digital copies of works from the countrys 12 national public collections, including the Louvre, with people in remote regions. With more than $3 million invested in the plan, the small digital museumsdubbed micro-foliesare expected to number 1,000 within three years.

We have been working very closely with our friends on the micro-folies, and we are also in discussions to possibly do something with the Mona Lisa VR but it is in early stages, de Font-Raulx says. We are supporting it and doing different types of experiences for example, our education gallery, la Petite Galerie, is very often presented outside of the Louvre, both in museums but also in factories, in supermarkets, and different types of places. So its something that we are very passionate about.

Leonardo da Vinci runs October 24, 2019, through January 24, 2020, at the Louvre in Paris.

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The Mona Lisa Experience: How the Louvres First-Ever VR Project, a 7-Minute Immersive da Vinci Odyssey, Works - artnet News

Imagine you are sitting in a chair. All of a sudden a giant tarantula slowly begins to crawl toward you. You reach forward, trying to swipe it away, but nothing happens. It turns out the spider is just an illusion created by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. No, this isnt torture. This is virtual reality exposure therapy.

In the past, therapy involved using real, living spiders. However, live exposure as a treatment option is difficult to deliver to people who fear things that cannot be easily brought indoors like blood (hemophobia), airplanes (aerophobia) and large animals (zoophobia).

Now, UT researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Institute of Mental Health Research say VR is simpler and maybe just as effective. They used the 3D stereoscopic features of the Oculus Rift to simulate the depth and motion of a spider being held by a model and then slowly crawling toward you. Seventy-seven UT undergraduates in an introductory psychology course who have a fear of these creepy crawlies participated in the study.

After several VR sessions, participants were tested with a live tarantula and were found to have clinically significant improvement, as published in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders. The researchers also compared VR therapy results with another live exposure alternative - CGI therapy and found VR had greater improvement possibly due to its ability to stimulate 3D first-person fears, whereas computer-generated imagery is 2D and lacks photorealistic depth. Today, they are continuing to solidify their claims with more experiments and are investigating other applications of virtual reality.

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Bone-Chilling UT News Round-Up Not For the Faint-Hearted - UT News | The University of Texas at Austin

BERGEN COUNTY, NJ There is enough negative news out there. But there are also stories that focus on the betterment of people and have happy endings. We are focusing on those stories for this weekly roundup. (Click the headlines to read.)

PARAMUS, NJ Virtual reality is coming to Westfield Garden State Plaza. The Void, a developer of virtual reality entertainment centers, plans to open its first New Jersey location sometime... Read more

OAKLAND, NJ A cat is available for adoption after her owner fled from domestic violence.Arielle was surrendered to the Oakland-based Ramapo-Bergen Animal Refuge because her owner was not... Read more

PARAMUS, NJ When a retiring Bergen Community College communications professor went out for breakfast at a local diner in honor of her last day on the job, she didn't expect to wind on a hidden... Read more

FRANKLIN LAKES, NJ A high school football player in Franklin Lakes is one of several students from across the tri-state region being recognized for his moves on the field and off of it. Samuel... Read more

PARAMUS, NJ British Swim School, a franchised brand of swim schools founded in England nearly 40 years ago, has recently opened its first Bergen County locations, operating out of a hotel in Mahwah... Read more

PARAMUS, NJ A professional cheese carver hit some sharp notes over the weekend the Paramus... Read more

Email: daniel.hubbard@patch.com

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Virtual Reality Venue Coming To Bergen: Good Bergen News - Patch.com